Diarmaid concludes his piece like this:
"Surely modern Church leaders in Lambeth Palace and the Vatican are grown up enough to show as much sense as Anne of Denmark and James I? Calm down dear. Why don't we just face the problem when we come to it?"

It would be nice to live in a world where Lambeth Palace and the Vatican are like this.

As I remember there was an horrendous struggle over the raising of Anne's children, she wasn't allowed to see them for years at a time ............

Posted by Martin Reynolds at
Wednesday, 9 January 2013 at 1:09pm GMT

** sigh **
Is it going to be the 1500s, forever? With eternal vigilance against -- dare I say it? -- papist perfidy?
How much real power does the Pope have nowadays in England -- or elsewhere? He can't even get his own married flock, never mind other flocks, to not use preventive pills and barrier devices in the bedroom.
Will England really be rocked to its core if a future heir to the throne were to marry, or be married to, a -- run for your lives, the Inquisitors are upon us -- Roman Catholic?
It's ironic. Here we are, in Merry Olde England and in The Colonies across the Pond, debating whether two people of the same sex can marry, and what the implications are, and yet the Head of England, the very symbol of the State, who (mostly symbolically) rules over tens of millions of people at home and abroad (through the Commonwealth) can't marry a person of the OPPOSITE sex that he or she pleases, if that person uses the "wrong" form of the Lord's Prayer.
Wait until the conservatives find out the liberals want to allow a first-born girl to have equal succession rights as first-born boys!
Doom, I tell you, we're all doomed!

Why should British law give a fig re RCC "must raise child as an RC" rules? The law should only care to say that the monarch/heir may marry someone who IS Roman Catholic, not who necessarily STAYS Roman Catholic (declining RC demands).

Posted by JCF at
Wednesday, 9 January 2013 at 9:19pm GMT

You cannot insist that Catholics give up their faith or that they abandon their church's request that any children should be brought up as Catholics. They may do so if they wish, but this is not something you can legislate for.

So while making the law you have to consider the possibility that a Catholic heir will eventually succeed to the throne and become the nominal head of the Church of England.And then you ought to consider the legal and constitutional consequences of that, bearing in mind that the CoE is an established church.

There are a number of possible answers to this but ignoring the potential problem is not one of them. It is right that this question should be considered now.

It's not, a question of what century Britain lives in but a question of what to do with the laws that currently govern the country and how to change them. And to do that, it helps to be fully aware of all possible future consequences and possible pitfalls. If only to find intelligent answers to them.

Posted by Erika Baker at
Thursday, 10 January 2013 at 8:48am GMT

Anne of Denmark was a secret catholic .. Having married James the first she was put off by the Calvinist Church of Scotkland and joined the Catholic Church.

Other monarchs married to good Catholics ( since the Reformation)

Catherine of Aragon....should be made a Saint and patron of the innocent parties in divorce.

Charles the first married Henrietta Maria, an exemplary Catholic..who prayed for her children and most were converted.

Catherine of Braganza...an exemplary Catholic

Mary of Modena...an exemplary Catholic.Granted a child after visisting the shrine of St Winifred in North Wales.

Mrs Fitzherbert married the future George the fourth... an exemplary Catholic.

Posted by Robert ian Williams at
Tuesday, 15 January 2013 at 6:33pm GMT

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